Jerry Vlasek, a Los Angeles heart surgeon and member of the radical Animal Defense League (ADL), says, in his view, it is acceptable to assassinate scientists working in biomedical research to save the lives of animals used in that research. “I think violence is part of the struggle against oppression,” he says. “If something bad happens to those people [animal researchers], it will discourage others. It is inevitable that violence will be used in the struggle and that it will be effective.” Vlasek adds: “I don’t think you’d have to kill too many. I think for five lives, 10 lives, 15 human lives, we could save a million, 2 million, 10 million non-human lives.” In 2004, Vlasek will be banned from entering Britain to attend a conference held by Britain’s Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC—see 1998) and SPEAK, an anti-vivisection group, for his remarks, though he will address the conference via video link. [Anti-Defamation League, 2005]

Charles Hockenbarger, an elderly activist for the virulently anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church (WBC—see November 27, 1955 and After) of Topeka, Kansas, is badly beaten by an unknown assailant while carrying a sign that reads, “Thank God for September 11.” WBC members routinely praise the 9/11 attacks as being part of God’s vengeance on America for tolerating homosexuality. The church claims that Hockenbarger’s assailant is a homosexual and the beating is part of a larger murder conspiracy. Hockenbarger’s assailant will remain unidentified. [Global Oneness, 2011] Hockenbarger was convicted of assaulting a Lutheran minister in 1996 (see 1996). It is not known if the two incidents are connected.

Ahmad al Mukhtar is appointed as director of foreign relations in Iraq’s Ministry of Trade. One of his tasks will be to push for Iraq’s inclusion into the World Trade Organization. Al Mukhtar, who has no background in economics and whose previous job was reading the English-language news on television, shares Washington’s view that Iraq needs a market-based economy and that Iraqis need to be weaned from their dependence on the state. According to Al Mukhtar, Iraqis “are lazy. The Iraqis by nature, they are very dependent…. They will have to depend on themselves, it is the only way to survive in the world today.” [Harper's, 9/24/2004]

The Illinois-Iowa National Guard is deployed to Iraq. The unit is sent with 14 of its Chinook helicopters. However only two of them are outfitted with aircraft survivability equipment. The remaining helicopters will operate in Iraq unprotected. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 12/27/2003]

Former US serviceman Arnold Parks learns that “test” medications he had been given by the US Army in 1965 (see 1965) were in fact VX, sarin, and LSD. In an interview with KFOR in Oklahoma City, he says that according to his military medical files: “[O]n this date they gave me VX, on this date they gave me sarin, on this date they gave me LSD. I was angry. As a matter of fact, I came unglued…. The VX they gave, it was a pill. And I asked the guy after I took that, you know, I asked him what was that? He said, ‘That’s the new pill for polio.’” After taking the LSD, he experienced serious hallucinations. “Some of these hallucinations got a little bit scary,” he says. “I think I had about four and the only one that was OK was the one that I watched this movie, it was a love story on TV. But there was no TV in the room, so I couldn’t have watched that movie on TV. So it was all an acid trip, basically it was a trip but the other three was the killing things.” Arnold Parks believes that the sarin and VX pills he ingested in 1965 caused damage to his arms, legs and heart. But the Veteran’s Administration has told him that the government is not liable for any damage unless it can been confirmed that the test pills given to him by the US government are the direct cause of his ailments. Mr. Parks wants compensation for being tricked into taking the harmful agents. “Pay me compensation. I want that and I would like to be treated. But I don’t think they can treat this.” [KFOR 4 (Oklahoma City), 4/25/2003]

The CIA makes a fake video of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, although the video is apparently never used. The video shows bin Laden and some associates of his sitting around a campfire, swigging bottles of liquor and talking about having had sex with boys, according to a former CIA official. The actors are drawn from “some of us darker-skinned employees,” the official will say. The timing of this effort is unclear, although it is apparently linked to discussions about making similar videos, including one of a fake Saddam Hussein having sex with a boy, prior to the 2003 Iraq invasion (see Before March 20, 2003). According to another former officer, the projects grind to a halt as nobody can come to an agreement on them. In particular, they are opposed by Deputy Director for Operations James Pavitt and his deputy, Hugh Turner, who keeps “throwing darts at it.” The officer will say that the ideas are ridiculous and, “They came from people whose careers were spent in Latin America or East Asia,” and do not understand the cultural nuances of the region. “Saddam playing with boys would have no resonance in the Middle East—nobody cares,” a third former official will say. “Trying to mount such a campaign would show a total misunderstanding of the target. We always mistake our own taboos as universal when, in fact, they are just our taboos.” After the CIA abandons the projects, they are apparently revived by the military. “The military took them over,” one former official will say. “They had assets in psy-war down at Ft. Bragg,” at the Army’s Special Warfare Center. The projects will be revealed in the Washington Post in 2010. [Washington Post, 5/25/2010]

French special forces soldiers later interviewed for a documentary film will claim that they had Osama bin Laden in their sights once in 2003 and once in 2004 but were never given the go-ahead to fire from their US superiors. One French soldier says, “In 2003 and 2004 we had bin Laden in our sights. The sniper said ‘I have bin Laden’.” It then reportedly takes two hours for the request to shoot to reach US officers who could authorize it, but the French soldier says, “There was a hesitation in command,” and the authorization never came. Four French soldiers are interviewed who back up this claim, but a French military spokesperson denies it. France has roughly 200 elite troops operating under US command near Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan at the time. [Reuters, 12/19/2006; CBC News, 12/22/2006]

The Bush administration tries to convince 9/11 commissioner John Lehman that there are ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda. The attempts take place in a series of meetings at the White House and Pentagon, where Lehman meets with Vice President Dick Cheney, White House chief of staff Andy Card, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. Lehman, a prominent Republican, was previously frozen out of politics by the administration due to his ties to John McCain, who ran for the Republican presidential nomination against George W. Bush in 2000. However, the administration officials encourage the meetings when they see Lehman is interested in the alleged connection between Iraq and Osama bin Laden, in the hopes that he will use his position on the 9/11 Commission to draw attention to the allegations. However, the White House says it cannot share all the intelligence it has about the ties, because it is too classified. Nevertheless, Lehman can take it on faith that the intelligence exists. Wolfowitz tells him, “Just wait until you see the evidence we’ve got.” Lehman will later say: “I got that from everybody I talked to: ‘Wait and see, just wait until you see the evidence.’” After it becomes clear to Lehman the alleged links are non-existent, he will comment, “I think they were all drinking their own bathwater.” [Shenon, 2008, pp. 178-180]

Mark Rossini. [Source: Fox News]Two FBI agents who were involved in a pre-911 failure, Doug Miller and Mark Rossini, are reportedly “eager” to provide testimony to the 9/11 Commission about that failure. However, the Commission does not issue them with a subpoena or otherwise interview them about the matter. Miller and Rossini were on loan to Alec Station, the CIA’s bin Laden unit, before 9/11, and helped block a cable to the FBI that said 9/11 hijacker Khalid Almihdhar had a US visa (see 9:30 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. January 5, 2000 and January 6, 2000). [Congressional Quarterly, 10/1/2008] The Commission will cite the transcript of an interview of Miller by the Justice Department’s inspector general in its final report. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 502] However, in the interview Miller falsely claims that he remembers nothing of the incident (see (February 12, 2004)). The Commission’s final report will also cite an interview it apparently conducted with Miller in December 2003, although this is in an endnote to a paragraph on terrorist financing. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 185, 504] As the blocked cable is not discovered by investigators until February 2004 (see Early February 2004), Miller is presumably not asked about it at the interview.

National Security Council lawyer John Bellinger. [Source: New York Times]The CIA meets three White House officials to discuss what to do with videotapes it has made of detainee interrogations (see Spring-Late 2002). The CIA wants to destroy the tapes, so it briefs the officials on them and asks their advice. The officials are: Alberto Gonzales, White House counsel until early 2005, when he will become attorney general; David Addington, counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney; John Bellinger, senior lawyer at the National Security Council; There are conflicting accounts of the advice the lawyers give the CIA. One source will say there was “vigorous sentiment” among some unnamed top White House officials to destroy the tapes. They apparently want to destroy the tapes in 2005 because they could be damaging in the light of the Abu Ghraib scandal (see April 28, 2004). Other sources will say nobody at the White House advocates destroying the tapes. However, it seems none of the lawyers gives a direct order to preserve the tapes or says their destruction would be illegal. [New York Times, 12/19/2007] A source familiar with Bellinger’s account will say, “The clear recommendation of Bellinger and the others was against destruction of the tapes… The recommendation in 2003 from the White House was that the tapes should not be destroyed.” [Associated Press, 12/20/2007] When CIA Director Michael Hayden informs legislators of these discussions in late 2007, he will say that upon being informed high-ranking CIA officials are demanding the tapes be destroyed, the lawyers “consistently counseled caution.” The Washington Post will comment: “The ambiguity in the phrasing of Hayden’s account left unresolved key questions about the White House’s role. While his account suggests an ambivalent White House view toward the tapes, other intelligence officials recalled White House officials being more emphatic at the first meeting that the videos should not be destroyed. Also unexplained is why the issue was discussed at the White House without apparent resolution for more than a year.” [Washington Post, 12/20/2007] Another White House official, Harriet Miers, is also consulted around this time and is said to advise against the tapes’ destruction (see Between 2003-Late 2005). [New York Times, 12/19/2007] When it is revealed that these officials were consulted, Law professor Jonathan Turley will comment: “[T]his is a very significant development, because it shows that this was not just some rogue operator at the CIA that destroyed evidence being sought by Congress and the courts. It shows that this was a planned destruction, that there were meetings and those meetings extended all the way to the White House, and included Alberto Gonzalez, who would soon become attorney general and Harriet Miers, who would become White House counsel. That’s a hair’s breath away from the president himself.” [CNN, 12/19/2007]

The US State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs awards DynCorp International a sole-sourced (no competitive bidding) $22 million contract to “re-establish police, justice, and prison functions in post conflict Iraq.” The contract will be bid out to competitors after one year. The contract raises a few eyebrows. The Reston, Virginia-based company has donated more than $160,000 to the Republican Party and its employees have been involved in a number of serious scandals. [Insight Magazine, 4/11/2003; New York Times, 10/4/2003] In Bosnia, for example, employees of the company were accused of operating a sex-slave ring of young women, keeping under-aged girls as concubines, and videotaping a DynCorp supervisor having sex with two girls. Although they were fired from their jobs, they were never prosecuted. [Los Angeles Times, 4/14/2002; New York Times, 10/13/2002; Insight Magazine, 4/11/2003] One of the whistle-blowers, Ben Johnston, told Congress in April 2002: “DynCorp employees were living off post and owning these children and these women and girls as slaves. Well, that makes all Americans look bad. I believe DynCorp is the worst diplomat our country could ever want overseas.” [New York Times, 10/13/2002] In Ecuador, DynCorp has been accused of allowing herbicides applied in Colombia to drift across the border killing legitimate crops, causing illness, and killing children. [New York Times, 10/13/2002] Commenting on the contract, an unnamed congressional aid tells Insight Magazine: “There are some strange things about how this contract was issued. [B]ecause why would CSC use an offshore subsidiary? Is it so they won’t have to pay taxes on this money? Also, why wasn’t this contract put up for bid? Why was DynCorp the chosen recipient?” [New York Times, 10/13/2002]

According to NBC News, at some point in early 2003, the US learns about an al-Qaeda target in Yemen, and US officials want to strike the target with a Predator missile. However, due to the Iraq war there are no Predators available and the target gets away. [MSNBC, 7/29/2003]

David Nahmias. [Source: US Department of Justice]US prosecutors in Detroit are trying four men accused of an al-Qaeda plot. The men, Abdel-Ilah Elmardoudi, Karim Koubriti, Ahmed Hannan, and Farouk Ali-Haimoud, were arrested shortly after 9/11. They had been living in a Detroit apartment previously occupied by Nabil al-Marabh (see September 17, 2001). Yousef Hmimssa, a Moroccan national, had lived in the Detroit apartment with al-Marabh. When the FBI raided the apartment, they found fake immigration papers linking Hmimssa and al-Marabh, along with attack plans. [ABC News 7 (Chicago), 1/31/2002] Hmimssa will later be the key witness in the trial against the four arrested Detroit men (see June 2003-August 2004). The FBI later identify three other witnesses—a landlord, a Jordanian informant, and a prison inmate—who linked the four arrested men to al-Marabh (see December 2002). The Detroit prosecutors want to charge al-Marabh as a fifth defendant. However, Deputy Assistant Attorney General David Nahmias prevents them from doing so. He says, “My understanding is that the only connection between al-Marabh and your case was an apparent misidentification by a landlord.” Additionally, memos written by Detroit prosecutors during the trial will later show that they believed the Justice Department was preventing them from introducing some of their most dramatic evidence in the trial. Lead Detroit prosecutor Richard Convertino will later say: “There was a series of evidence, pieces of evidence, that we wanted to get into our trial that we were unable to do. Things that would have strengthened the case immeasurably, and made the case much stronger, exponentially.” For instance, the FBI had learned before the trial that al-Qaeda leader Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi told US interrogators after his capture that bin Laden had authorized an attack on the US air base in Incirlik, Turkey. The FBI also found sketches in the Detroit apartment of what they believed was the same base. The prosecutors wanted to link this evidence to testimony by the al-Libi, but he was handed over to Egypt to be tortured and prosecutors were not able to interview him or use him as a witness (see January 2002 and After). Turkish authorities will later claim that their own evidence indicates bin Laden did authorize an attack on the base at one point. Detroit prosecutors also later complain that the lone Justice Department lawyer sent to help with the case had no intention of helping with the trial, and spent most of his time in Detroit staying in his hotel room or playing basketball. [Associated Press, 8/9/2004] In 2002, Chicago prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is also prohibited from charging al-Marabh with any crime (see January-2002-December 2002).

Former Green Beret Robert Bevelacqua, a Fox News military analyst and a part of the Pentagon’s propaganda operation to promote the Iraq war (see April 20, 2008 and Early 2002 and Beyond), is, along with other analysts, briefed about Iraq’s purported stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. When he asks his briefer about “smoking gun” proof, the briefer admits, “We don’t have any hard evidence.” Bevelacqua and the other analysts are alarmed by the concession. Another analyst, retired Army lieutenant colonel Robert Maginnis, who works in the Pentagon for a military contractor, is at the same briefing. Maginnis later confirms Bevelacqua’s recollection, saying that he felt “very disappointed” and that he and the other analysts were being “manipulated” to believe in weapons that were not proven to exist. Yet Bevelacqua, Maginnis, and other analysts are firm in their on-air insistence that these weapons do indeed exist. Bevelacqua has started a new defense contracting business, the wvc3 Group, and hopes to win lucrative government contracts. “There’s no way I was going to go down that road and get completely torn apart,” he will later say. “You’re talking about fighting a huge machine.” [New York Times, 4/20/2008]

Mark Garlasco. [Source: Canal+]The Defense Intelligence Agency [DIA] concludes early in 2003 that the intelligence being provided by dissidents supplied by Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress (INC) is of little value. The New York Times reports that an internal DIA study has found that “dissidents invented or exaggerated their credentials as people with direct knowledge of the Iraqi government and its suspected unconventional weapons program.” [New York Times, 9/29/2003; Independent, 9/30/2003] The study also reveals that more than $1 million was paid to Chalabi’s group for information about Saddam Hussein’s alleged banned weapons programs. [New York Times, 9/29/2003; Independent, 9/30/2003] Unnamed officials interviewed by the Times say the defectors were considered by the Defense Intelligence Agency to be dubious sources from the start. It is believed that the dissidents’ motivation for talking has been money and their opposition to Saddam Hussein. But the Times’ sources “would not speculate on whether the defectors had knowingly provided false information and, if so, what their motivation might have been.” [New York Times, 9/29/2003; Independent, 9/30/2003] Similarly, Mark Garlasco of the DIA will tell PBS Frontline in 2006, that the “INC was constantly shoving crap at us. They were providing information that they thought we wanted to hear. They were feeding the beast [referring to the Office of Special Plans and those within the administration who wanted to go to war with Iraq].” [PBS Frontline, 6/20/2006] The bureau chief of Knight Ridder Newspapers, John Walcott, will later say of Chalabi, “Chalabi’s motives were always perfectly clear in this and understandable. He was an Iraqi. He didn’t want his country run by a thug and a murderer, a mass murderer, and a crook. And everything he said had to be looked at in that light, and scrutinized in that light. And why anyone would give him a free pass, or anyone else a free pass for that matter, on a matter as important as going to war, is beyond me.” [PBS, 4/25/2007]

Randy Waite of the EPA’s Office of Air Quality Planning says in an email to representatives of the meat industry, “We need to start getting across the idea that farms are going to continue to be vulnerable to citizen suits and this data will go a long way in helping us, in partnership, to find solutions to some of those issues, making them less vulnerable in the long run.” The Chicago Tribune, which obtained a copy of the email along with several other documents through the Freedom of Information Act, notes that Waite sounds almost as though he considers himself a partner with the industry his agency is supposed to be regulating, “arrayed against, for example, citizens who want to file lawsuits.” [Knight Ridder, 5/16/2004]

In early 2003, the Treasury Department draws up a list of 300 individuals, charities, and corporations in Southeast Asia believed to be funding al-Qaeda and its suspected Indonesian affiliate Jemaah Islamiya. “Due to inter-agency politics, the list [is] winnowed down to 18 individuals and 10 companies.” [Contemporary Southeast Asia, 8/1/2003] Later, the number of suspected financiers is narrowed down even further, and on September 5, 2003, only 10 individuals, all connected to Jemaah Islamiya, have their assets frozen. [Associated Press, 9/5/2003] The assets of Jemaah Islamiya itself were frozen shortly after the October 2002 Bali bombings was blamed on the group (see October 12, 2002), though ties between the group and al-Qaeda were first publicly reported in January 2002. [Associated Press, 1/18/2002; United Press International, 1/25/2003] Hambali, a notorious leader of both al-Qaeda’s Southeast Asia operations and Jemaah Islamiya, only had his assets frozen in January 2003, even though he was publicly mentioned as a major figure as far back as January 2001. [New Straits Times, 1/25/2001; Associated Press, 1/18/2002]

Six alleged members of the fertilizer bomb plot: Salahuddin Amin, Anthony Garcia, Waheed Mahmood, Momin Khawaja, Jawad Akbar, and Omar Khyam. [Source: Metropolitan Police/ CP Jonathan Hayward]In early 2003, the British intelligence agency MI5 is tracking a suspected al-Qaeda leader living in Britain known as Mohammed Quayyum Khan (a.k.a. “Q”) (see March 2003 and After), and they see him repeatedly meeting with a Pakistani-Briton named Omar Khyam. Quayyum is believed to be an aide to al-Qaeda leader Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi. [BBC, 5/1/2007] By around March or April 2003, investigators begin monitoring Khyam, and soon discover he is a ringleader in a fertilizer bomb plot on unknown targets in Britain. [BBC, 4/30/2007]Surveillance Intensifies - By the beginning of February 2004, surveillance intensifies. Thousands of hours of audio are recorded on dozens of suspects. The investigation soon focuses on a smaller group of Khyam’s close associates who are originally from Pakistan and had attended training camps in mountainous regions of Pakistan in recent years. Most of these men have links to Al-Muhajiroun, a banned Islamist group formed by radical London imam Omar Bakri Mohammed. The plotters are monitored discussing various targets, including nightclubs, pubs, and a network of underground high-pressure gas pipelines. In February 2004, MI5 intercepts a phone conversation between Khyam talking to his associate Salahuddin Amin, in Pakistan, about the quantities of different ingredients needed to construct a fertilizer bomb. An al-Qaeda operative in Pakistan had encouraged Amin to bomb targets in Britain. Fertilizer Found and Replaced - Later in February, employees at a self storage depot in London call police after discovering a large amount of ammonium nitrate fertilizer being stored and suspecting it might be used for a bomb. Investigators discover the fertilizer belongs to Khyam and his group, and has been stored there since November 2003. The fertilizer is covertly replaced with an inert substance so a bomb cannot be successfully made from it. Arrests Made - Investigators discover that Khyam is planning to fly to Pakistan on April 6, and the decision is made to arrest the suspects before he leaves the country. On March 29, a bomb plotter named Momin Khawaja is arrested where he is living in Canada. Weapons and a half-built detonator are found in his house. The next day, Khyam and seventeen others are arrested in England (see March 29, 2004 and After). Aluminum powder, a key bomb ingredient, is found in a shed owned by Khyam. Amin, still living in Pakistan, turns himself in to authorities there a few days later. Another key member of the group, Mohammed Junaid Babar, is not arrested and flies to the US on April 6. But he is arrested there four days later and quickly agrees to reveal all he knows and testify against the others (see April 10, 2004). Five Convicted in Trial - The suspects will be put on trial in 2006 and Babar will be the star prosecution witness. Five people, including Khyam, will be sentenced to life in prison in 2007. Trials against Khawaja in Canada and Amin in Pakistan have yet to be decided. Curiously, Quayyum, who has been alleged to the mastermind of the plot and the key al-Qaeda link, is never arrested or even questioned, and continues to live openly in Britain (see March 2003 and After). [Guardian, 5/1/2007]

Jacques Ravel. [Source: New York Times / Brendan Smialowsk]In 2002, scientists mapped the anthrax genome in an attempt to generate new leads for the anthrax attacks investigation. Initially, the results are disappointing because the anthrax used in the letters, which is from the Ames strain, do not seem to differ in any way from the original Ames strain used in many laboratories (see Early-Late 2002). But around early 2003, an unnamed US Army microbiologist at USAMRIID, the US Army’s top bioweapons laboratory, makes a breakthrough. He discovers a morph (also known as a morphotype) that allows scientists to detect differences between the genetic structure of the anthrax used in the attacks and other anthrax. Jacques Ravel, a leading member of the scientific team at the The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) that is decoding the anthrax genome, is asked to decode more morphs. After two years, the team is able to decode a total of eight morphs. The head of TIGR will later comment that it was not clear why the FBI did not ask other laboratories to share the task and speed up the process. Other scientists working with the FBI select four of the morphs as having the most reliable unique genetic differences, known as indels. All of the anthrax letters used anthrax containing these four indels. The FBI finally has a unique signature for the anthrax used in the attacks and starts looking for laboratories that have used an exact match. [New York Times, 8/20/2008] Apparently, by early 2004 scientists already know enough to notice a discrepancy with a sample scientist Bruce Ivins has submitted to the investigation, and the FBI raids Ivins’s lab in July 2004 to seize more samples from him (see Early 2004 and July 16, 2004).

Senior CIA analyst Paul Pillar produces a high-level report on the potential challenges US forces will experience in post-Hussein Iraq. Pillar’s paper argues that imposing democracy on Iraq will not be easy. He warns that the country may fracture along ethnic and religious lines and explode into violence. He also says that the US will not be able to finance reconstruction with Iraq’s oil revenue. The report is sent to the office of CIA Director George Tenet and forwarded to the White House and Pentagon. An administration official tells him that his paper is “too negative.” “You guys just don’t see the possibilities,” Pillar later recalls the official saying. [Isikoff and Corn, 2006, pp. 198]

The CIA’s Iraq Operations Group flies the Anabasis team from their Nevada training site to Jordan to wait for a green light from the White House. If the signal is given, the team—comprised of more than 100 members—will be flown to an isolated Iraqi military base near the Saudi border where they will announce a coup on the radio and call on other military units to join them. Then, when Hussein flies his troops south to quell the insurrection, the US Air Force will shoot them down for violating the no-fly zone. The confrontation will then be used as a pretext for full-scale war (see also Late November 2001 or December 2001). But the operation will be opposed by General Franks, and the Anabasis team will never receive the signal (see After January 2003). [Isikoff and Corn, 2006, pp. 166]

Denis Paradis, Canada’s Secretary of State for Latin America, hosts a two-day meeting at the Meech Lake Lodge called the “Ottawa Initiative.” The meeting is designed to look at the current situation in Haiti, and is held without public access. In attendance are two high-ranking officials from the US State Department, officials from France, EU, El Salvador, and Canada. No one from Haiti is invited. What is discussed at the meeting is kept secret until it is leaked in March (see March 22, 2005). [News Haiti, 8/28/2004]

In an interview with the Guardian, Harvard law professor Alan M. Dershowitz says that he has heard from former agents that torture “was done and… is done.” He also says that he believes the US “freely subcontracts its torture to Jordan, Egypt, and the Philippines.” Dershowitz identified himself shortly after the September 11 attacks as a proponent of using torture in the war on terrorism when he argued that it should be permissible by law in certain cases (see November 8, 2001). According to William Goodman, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, who is also interviewed by the Guardian, “Dershowitz is not a lone voice. He speaks for a segment of the population, and there is clearly some thought being given to this.” He adds, “It is as American as apple pie,” although he also points out the law clearly prohibits torture. [Guardian, 1/25/2003]

British police discover a ricin lab allegedly connected to a militant training camp in northern Iraq controlled by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Six suspects are arrested in London. The US has known about the camp and its ties to chemical weapons production for months, and twice the US military has drawn up plans for a strike upon it, and twice the White House has decided against taking action (see June 2002 and November 2002). Based on these new developments in London, the US military draws up a third attack plan against the camp, but again the White House rejects taking action. [MSNBC, 3/2/2004] Communications intercepts indicate that al-Zarqawi is still making calls on his satellite phone from within the camp. [Wall Street Journal, 10/25/2004] Lt. Gen. Michael DeLong, deputy commander to Gen. Tommy Franks at Central Command at the time, will later say that the training camp “was so troubling to us. We almost took them out three months before the Iraq war started. We almost took that thing, but we were so concerned that the chemical cloud from there could devastate the region that we chose to take them by land rather than by smart weapons.” [PBS Frontline, 6/20/2006] However, in March 2003 shortly after the Iraq war begins, the camp will actually be hit by air strikes and not the land attack indicated by DeLong (see March 20, 2003). NBC News will later comment, “Military officials insist their case for attacking al-Zarqawi’s operation was airtight, but the [Bush] administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam [Hussein].” [MSNBC, 3/2/2004] President Bush will secretly decide around early March 2003 not to attack the camp until the US invasion of Iraq is underway later that month (see Early March 2003).

President George W. Bush meets with Iraqi exiles. According to a former senior White House official, after the meeting, Bush decides that the exiles will not be put in power in post-Saddam Iraq. “The future of this country… is not going to be charted by people who sat out the sonofabitch (Saddam) in London or Cambridge, Massachusetts,” Bush is said to have stated. This effectively kills the Pentagon’s plan to create an Iraqi-government-in-exile which was to include the Ahmed Chalabi, the president of the Iraqi National Congress (INC). [Knight Ridder, 7/12/2003]

US military officials insist that US and British aerial attacks against targets in Iraq are being conducted only in response to Iraqis firing on planes patrolling the so-called “no-fly” zones. The increased number of aerial strikes (see June 2002-March 2003) is a response, they say, to Iraq’s increased hostility toward US and British jets, not preparation for a ground attack as some critics have suggested. “The Iraqi regime has increased its attacks on the coalition, so the coalition has increased its efforts to protect its pilots,” Jim Wilkinson, a spokesman for the US Central Command in Tampa, says. “Every coalition action is in direct response to Iraqi hostile acts against our pilots, or the regime’s attempts to materially improve its military infrastructure south of the 33rd parallel.” But according to the Washington Post, these officials have also “acknowledge[d] that military planners are taking full advantage of the opportunity to target Iraq’s integrated air defense network for destruction in a systemic fashion that will ease the way for US air and ground forces if President Bush decides war is the only option for disarming Iraq.” Loren B. Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute who has ties to defense contractors and the Pentagon, says the attacks on Iraq’s southern air defenses will allow the US military “to send in almost anything it wants—bombers, fighters, and helicopters with Special Operations Forces” when the official invasion begins. It will also make it safer for the slow-moving C-17 transports to move troops inside Iraq. Similarly, retired Air Force Col. John Warden, who helped plan the US air campaign against Iraq in 1991, explains, “Anything that would need to be knocked out that is knocked out now saves some sorties once the war starts.” The attacks, he notes, have “some obvious value in the event of a war.” Anthony H. Cordesman, a former defense official at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, also disputes the notion that the increased US air attacks are purely retaliatory. “You enforce containment when you carry out these strikes, and you deter Iraq from any kind of military adventure,” he explains. “And when you conduct these strikes, you are preparing part of the battleground for a war.” [Washington Post, 1/15/2003]

President Bush receives a highly classified “President’s Summary” from the intelligence community’s National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq (see October 1, 2002), focusing on whether or not Saddam Hussein would launch an unprovoked attack on the US, either directly or in conjunction with terrorist groups. The consensus of all 16 intelligence agencies is that such an attack would be highly unlikely unless “ongoing military operations risked the imminent demise of his regime,” or if Hussein intends to “extract revenge” for such an assault. The State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) goes even farther, stating that Hussein is “unlikely to conduct clandestine attacks against the US homeland even if [his] regime’s demise is imminent” as the result of a US invasion. The same conclusion is circulated in Senior Executive Intelligence Briefs for senior White House officials, their senior staff members, and Congress’s intelligence oversight committees. Bush and his senior officials, specifically including Vice President Dick Cheney, have received at least four other reports since the spring of 2002 drawing the same conclusion, that Saddam Hussein is not a likely threat to the US. 'Imminent Threat' - However, Bush, Cheney, and other government officials have continued, and will continue, to assert that Hussein was ready and willing to use chemical or biological weapons against the US, either on his own or through a terrorist group such as al-Qaeda, unless stopped by force. The argument that Hussein is an “imminent threat” is a major rationale in the administration’s case for war. Refusal to Release - The Bush administration will refuse to release the Presidential Summary to Congressional investigators who wish to know the basis for the Bush administration’s assertions about the alleged threat from Iraq. Bush and other senior officials will insist for months that they were never told of the intelligence community’s judgment that Hussein had no intention of launching an unprovoked attack on the US. By refusing to release the summary memo, the White House may be withholding the proof that Bush and his officials deliberately misled the public on the issue. [National Journal, 3/2/2006]

The CIA reports to the White House that it has serious doubts about reports that the Iraqi military base at Salman Pak was ever used to train Islamist terrorists (see April 6, 2003). The agency reports in part, “The probability that the training provided at such centers, e.g. Salman Pak, was similar to that al-Qaeda could offer at its own camps in Afghanistan, combined with the sourcing difficulties, leads us to conclude that we need additional corroboration before we can validate that this low level basic terrorist training for al-Qaeda occurred in Iraq.” [Knight Ridder, 6/17/2004]

A military officer asks Spc. Sean Baker, an MP and member of the Kentucky National Guard, to serve in the role of detainee in a training exercise at Guantanamo. In one of the cells, dressed in a standard orange prison jumpsuit over his battle dress uniform, he takes up position in a cell, pretending to be uncooperative by crawling under a bunk bed. Five soldiers in the “internal reaction force” are told he is a genuine detainee who has attacked a sergeant. Baker later recalls: “They grabbed my arms, my legs, twisted me up and unfortunately one of the individuals got up on my back from behind and put pressure down on me while I was face down. Then he—the same individual—reached around and began to choke me and press my head down against the steel floor. After several seconds, 20 to 30 seconds, it seemed like an eternity because I couldn’t breathe. When I couldn’t breathe, I began to panic and I gave the code word I was supposed to give to stop the exercise, which was ‘red.‘… That individual slammed my head against the floor and continued to choke me. Somehow I got enough air. I muttered out: ‘I’m a US soldier. I’m a US soldier.’” The assault ends when the soldiers notice Baker is wearing a US uniform under the jumpsuit. Baker suffers severe head wounds and has to be treated for traumatic brain injury. The Physical Evaluation Board of the Army says in a document dated September 29, 2003: “The TBI [traumatic brain injury] was due to soldier playing role of detainee who was non-cooperative and was being extracted from detention cell in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, during a training exercise.” [New York Times, 6/5/2004]

US forces arrest and detain an Iraqi for possession of explosive devices. The man is held at FOB [Forward Operating Base] Rifles Base in Asad, Iraq, and eventually placed in an isolation cell for questioning by members of the US Special Forces’ Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA) who shackle him to a pipe that runs along the ceiling. When the Iraqi lunges toward a US soldier, grabbing his shirt, “the three ODA members [punch] and [kick] [him] in the stomach and ribs for approximately one to two minutes.” Three days later, the man escapes but is recaptured on January 9. The prisoner is then subjected to another round of questioning, but does not cooperate. When he refuses to be quiet, the soldiers tie his hands to the top of his cell door and then gag him. Five minutes later, a soldier notices that the Iraqi is “slumped down and hanging from his shackles,” dead. [Denver Post, 5/18/2004]

According to analysis by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), “non-lethal” gases can be lethal. Summarizing a report by the organization, David Isenberg of the Asia Times explains, “[W]hen an incapacitating agent that is exceptionally safe by pharmacological standards (therapeutic index (TI) =1000) is delivered under ideal conditions to a uniformly healthy population, 9 percent of victims would die if the goal were to incapacitate almost everyone (99 percent) in a particular place (often an enclosed space), as in hostage rescue or urban military operations.” [National Research Council, 2003; Asia Times, 4/1/2003]

The proposed 2004 budget of the Energy Department’s Nuclear Security Administration includes some $15 million for the development of a nuclear bunker-buster bomb called the “Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator” and $6 million for two of the nation’s nuclear weapons laboratories, Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore. The labs would “assemble design teams to study advanced nuclear concepts,” the Washington Post reports. [Washington Post, 2/20/2003; USA Today, 7/6/2003]

The journal Chest publishes an article summarizing the case of a 37-year-old male engineer who is diagnosed with cough and dyspnea three weeks after being exposed to dust at Ground Zero. The patient’s lung biopsy contained large quantities of silicates. The authors of the study suggest “that exposure to one or more materials resulting from the WTC catastrophe may be implicated in the development of granulomatous pulmonary disease.” [B.H. et al., 1/2003]

To date, over 1,000 New York City firefighters have filed lawsuits against the City of New York claiming that the city failed to provide them with respirators during rescue and recovery efforts at the WTC. [Kupferman, 2003 ]

President Bush signs an executive order creating the Office of Global Communications (OGC—see July 30, 2002), whose mission is to “ensure consistency in messages that will promote the interests of the United States abroad, prevent misunderstanding, build support for and among coalition partners of the United States, and inform international audiences.” The OGC soon sends out a daily “Global Messenger” e-mail of talking points to administration officials, US embassies, Congress, and outside recipients. It organizes daily telephone conference calls to coordinate foreign policy messages among US government agencies and representatives of British Prime Minister Tony Blair. PR expert Sheldon Rampton later writes, “These activities may sound innocuous. The idea of ‘ensuring consistency’ is a cardinal rule of PR crisis communications, whose practitioners try whenever possible to make sure that all messages flow through a single, controlling channel. In practice, however, ensuring consistency leads to a concerted effort to enforce a ‘party line’ on all messages emanating from the US government, effectively silencing officials whose point of view contradicts the official institutional message.” [PRWatch, 4/2003; US State Department, 9/28/2004]

Associated Press reporter Charles Hanley, an award-winning news veteran with over 30 years of weapons issues coverage on his record, accompanies the UN weapons inspectors combing through Iraq to find the suspected weapons of mass destruction. In 2007, Hanley will recall: “What we did was go out everyday with the inspectors. These guys would roar out on these motorcades at very high speed and roar through towns and do sudden U-turns and drive over land and do all of these things to confuse the Iraqis about where they were going so that there wouldn’t be a call ahead telling them to put away all the bad stuff. The inspectors then would issue a daily report. And as it turned out, of course, inspection after inspection, it turned out to be clean. They had nothing to report, no violations to report.” Hanley files repeated reports with statements such as, “No smoking guns in… almost 400 inspections.” But, Hanley will later say, his editors often refuse to print his work. “[T]hat would be stricken from my copy because it would strike some editors as tendentious. As sort of an attack or some sort of allegation rather than a fact. You know and we don’t want our reporters alleging things. We, you know, we just report the facts. Well it was a fact. It was a very important fact that seemed to be lost on an awful lot of journalists unfortunately.” Instead, Hanley says, “The media just continued on this path of reporting, ‘Well, the Bush administration alleges that there are WMD,’ and never really stopped and said ‘It doesn’t look like there are. There’s no evidence.’ That should have been the second sentence in any story about the allegations of WMD. The second sentence should have been, ‘But they did not present any evidence to back this up.’” [PBS, 4/25/2007]

Two classified intelligence reports prepared for President Bush by the National Intelligence Council warn of the potential costly and bloody consequences of a US-led invasion of Iraq. The reports will be leaked to the press in September 2004 (see September 28, 2004). The assessments both predict that such an invasion will increase support for radical Islam, and deepen already-sharp societal divisions in Iraq to the point where violent internal strife is a strong likelihood. The assessments warn of a possible insurgency, either against the new Iraqi government, the US occupation forces, or both, and predict that “rogue elements” from the Saddam Hussein government may either join with existing terrorist organizations or begin independent insurgent operations. And, the assessments add, war and subsequent occupation is likely to increase sympathy across the Islamic world for some terrorist objectives, at least for a time. It is unlikely that Iraq will actually split into two or three disparate regions, the reports say, but violence between various ethnic and religious groups is almost inevitable unless the occupation forces prevent it. One assessment says that any efforts to build democracy in Iraq will be long, difficult, and potentially turbulent, with the nation always threatening to backslide into authoritarianism, Iraq’s traditional political model. [New York Times, 9/28/2004]

Jay Garner. [Source: US Army]The Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) is created by the Pentagon to direct the post-war administration of Iraq, and signed into existence by President Bush. Its head, retired Army General Jay Garner, ostensibly reports to Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith (see Fall 2002), but Garner will later say that once he is in Iraq proper, General Tommy Franks of the US Central Command (CENTCOM) “will be my boss.” ORHA is later renamed the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). David Kay, a senior fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies and a former UN weapons inspector, had initially been selected to head the office, but he declined the invitation. Associates of Kay tell the New York Times that Kay felt the new agency seemed relatively uninterested in the task of promoting democracy. [New York Times, 2/23/2003; New York Times, 4/2/2003; Roberts, 2008, pp. 126, 134] Garner is considered an excellent selection, having led the relief effort for the Kurds of northern Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War. But he faces an uphill battle, as ORHA’s functionality is plagued from the outset by a severe lack of time, uncertain funding, and incessant interdepartmental strife, particularly between the State and Defense Departments. Most ORHA workers will not have reported for duty by the time the invasion begins. And attempts to recruit experts from other agencies will be blocked by Feith and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who impose strict ideological and bureaucratic restrictions on Garner’s selections for his staff. [Roberts, 2008, pp. 126, 134]

The Commission on Post-Conflict Reconstruction, a group affiliated with the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, releases a report entitled “Play to Win,” which addresses the problem of reconstruction in post-invasion Iraq. The commission, a bipartisan group of retired military and civilian leaders, cautions: “Given the sheer complexity of post-conflict reconstruction efforts, developing a clear strategic plan of action is critical to success. Such a plan should articulate the US interests at stake, define US objectives for the intervention, and lay out the strategy for achieving these policy objectives, and a clear division of labor delineating who is responsible for what aspects of the plan’s implementation. Perhaps even more important than the plan itself is the strategic development and planning process, which allows key players to build working relationships, identify potential inconsistencies and gaps, synchronize their actions, and better understand their roles.” Unfortunately, the report concludes, the federal government lacks the mechanisms necessary for proper planning and coordination of such an effort. [Roberts, 2008, pp. 124-125]

US military commanders in Afghanistan request clarification and guidance from CENTCOM and the Joint Chiefs of Staff as to what interrogation techniques they can use against detainees in US custody. The commanders describe the techniques currently being employed and recommend that they be approved as official policy for Afghanistan operations. Some of the techniques had been approved by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for Guantanamo exclusively (see December 2, 2002); others had been rescinded altogether. Those officials ignore the request. After a time, the military commanders in Afghanistan will decide that “silence is consent,” and will adopt the techniques being used as “official policy.” [American Civil Liberties Union, 7/10/2006]

The FBI lures a Yemeni terrorism financier, Mohammed Ali Hassan al-Moayad, to Germany as part of a sting operation. One of the assets involved in the operation is Mohamed Alanssi, who works as a mole for the bureau, where he is handled by an agent named Robert Fuller (see November 2001). Alanssi will later say that his role in the operation is to persuade al-Moayad to travel to Germany, where US agents manage to tape him boasting of his involvement in providing money, recruits, and supplies to al-Qaeda, Hamas, and other terrorist groups. Al-Moayad is then arrested together with one of his assistants, Mohammed Mohsen Yahya Zayed. They will later be extradited to the US for trial (see November 16, 2003), but Alanssi’s role in the operation will be revealed in the press and his relationship with the FBI will go sour (see November 15, 2004). [BBC, 11/16/2003; Washington Post, 11/16/2004]

Robert G. Houdek, national intelligence officer for Africa, concludes in a memo that allegations about Iraq attempting to obtain uranium from Niger are baseless. [Washington Post, 4/9/2006] The National Intelligence Council, the entity that oversees the US’s 15 intelligence agencies, issues Houdek’s report, which states in part, “The Niger story [of Iraq attempting to purchase Nigerien uranium—see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001] was baseless and should be laid to rest.” The memo immediately goes to President Bush and his top officials. [Unger, 2007, pp. 269]

President Bush, speaking with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (see Shortly after September 11, 2001), rebuffs Berlusconi’s attempts to persuade him not to invade Iraq. (Publicly, Berlusconi supports the invasion plans, but he worries about public opinion in Italy, which is heavily opposed to any such invasion.) Of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Bush says: “We have put together a lethal military and we will kick his _ss.… This is going to change. You watch—public opinion will change. We lead our publics. We cannot follow our publics.” The statement to Berlusconi will be quoted in Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward’s book Plan of Attack. [Hunt, 9/1/2009, pp. 12]

A Brookings Institution study concludes that in his first two years in office, “[President] Bush vetoed several specific (and relatively cost-effective) measures proposed by Congress that would have addressed critical national vulnerabilities. As a result, the country remains more vulnerable than it should be today.” [Carter, 2004, pp. 14]

According to US intelligence, insurgents in the Zabul province of Afghanistan receive a month of training in bomb-making, explosives, and assassination techniques from “three Pakistani military officers.” The training is said to be conducted in preparation for a spring campaign targeting Westerners. Ricardo Mungia, a Red Cross water engineer, will be killed by militants on March 27, 2003, in the adjacent Oruzgan province. The murder will greatly hinder development programs in many parts of Afghanistan. The intelligence on this is later mentioned in the Guantanamo file of a detainee named Abdul Kakal Hafiz, which will be leaked to the public in 2011. [Guardian, 4/25/2011]

The NSA’s secret room in the AT&T switching center. [Source: PBS]Veteran AT&T technician Mark Klein (see July 7, 2009) takes an informal tour of his company’s facility on San Francisco’s Folsom Street (see Late 2002), along with three other technicians from his Geary Street offices. The tour, Klein will later say, is to introduce the four technicians to the Folsom Street staff, “because they were obviously eventually planning to bring us over there.” Klein learns that the rumors of a “secret room” in the facility are true (see Fall 2002). The secret room is on the facility’s sixth floor and is being built to house some sort of equipment, but Klein is unsure exactly what that equipment might be. Klein and the others see the outer door of the secret room, and a workman working on the door “suddenly [began talking to Klein and his colleages in a] very low voice like he didn’t want to be overheard. He felt like this was something secret, you know, and he didn’t know much about it, and he was saying: ‘None of us can go in there. It’s all secret.’ This was not only an affront to the technicians; it was a violation of union rules, because they were obviously planning to install telecommunications equipment, which is supposed to be the jurisdiction of the union technicians. We had a contract. So the technicians were not only angry about this secret thing that they’re not let in on, but also the fact that there’s work there that they’re excluded from. And they were told nothing about it. So that was it.” Klein is further surprised to learn that only a single non-union technician (whom he only identifies as “Ski,” an AT&T “field support specialist” who has been granted a security clearance by the National Security Agency (NSA)), is allowed to work in the secure room. No union technicians are allowed in, even though the installation work being done is specifically contracted to the union workers. “The regular technician work force was not allowed in the room,” Klein will later state. Klein deduces that this secret room is the long-rumored NSA installation he has been hearing about. Moreover, he notes with some alarm that the room is next door to the 4ESS phone switch, “the traditional workhorse used for AT&T long-distance calls.” Klein will write, “Now my mental alarm bells were ringing, but for the moment there was nothing to do but take some mental notes, particularly since it was not clear exactly what they [the NSA and AT&T] were doing.” [Wired News, 4/7/2006; Democracy Now!, 5/12/2006; PBS Frontline, 5/15/2007; Klein, 2009, pp. 26-28] Klein will explain that he chooses not to say anything about his concerns because he is “scared for several reasons, one being, well, this is obviously secret. This is obviously some federal government secret operation that they don’t want nosy people nosing around in, and if I started asking questions I could get into trouble. Furthermore, our jobs were in jeopardy anyway, because [we] were always getting wind that they were planning to close our previous office at Geary Street, and I didn’t need to give them an excuse to fire me. So I thought after thinking about it that the best thing to do is not to say anything and just watch it.” [PBS Frontline, 5/15/2007] He later learns that similar cabinets are being installed in AT&T centers in other cities, including Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles, and San Diego (see Late 2003). [Wired News, 4/7/2006] The Folsom Street facility is apparently connected to a more central surveillance facility operated out of one of AT&T’s main command centers in Missouri (see Late 2002-Early 2003).

The Bush administration’s proposed 2004 defense budget would cap raises for E-1s, E-2s and O-1s at 2 percent, which is significantly below the average raise for military personnel of 4.1 percent. [Army Times, 6/30/2003]

The CIA’s Office of the Inspector General, headed by John Helgerson, receives information that some CIA employees are concerned about the agency’s interrogation program. Specifically, they are worried that certain covert CIA activities at an overseas black site where detainees are held may involve violations of human rights. [Central Intelligence Agency, 5/7/2004, pp. 2 ] The identity of the CIA black site and the type of abuse is not publicly known. However, around this time, some new officers arrive at a CIA black site in Poland and report abuse there to the agency’s management (see January 2003).

Harriet Miers. [Source: Public domain via Wikipedia]White House official Harriet Miers is informed by CIA General Counsel Scott Muller that the CIA has made video recordings of detainee interrogations and is told that the CIA is considering destroying the tapes. She advises not to destroy them. [ABC News, 12/7/2007; New York Times, 12/8/2007] The CIA is canvassing opinion on whether the tapes can be destroyed, and it repeatedly asks Miers about what it should do with the videotapes (see November 2005), which are said to show questionable interrogation methods. These discussions are reportedly documented in a series of e-mails between the CIA and the White House. One person involved is CIA Acting General Counsel John Rizzo. Miers’ opinion is asked because the CIA apparently thinks its interrogation and detention program was “imposed” on it by the White House, so the decision about what to do with the tapes should be made “at a political level.” Miers continues to advise the CIA that the tapes should not be destroyed, but the CIA destroys them anyway in late 2005 (see November 2005). [Newsweek, 12/11/2007] It is unclear when this happens. One account says Miers is first consulted in 2003, another in 2005. Miers is deputy chief of staff to the President until early 2005, when she becomes White House Council. [New York Times, 12/19/2007] The CIA also asks other White House officials for their opinions, but there are contradictory reports of their advice (see (2003-2004)).

Officials in the Bush administration debate whether or not they will seek a second UN resolution prior to invading Iraq. The debate centers on the issue of whether or not France and “other reluctant allies” will give in to US demands. The New York Times reports on January 17 that officials plan “to confront France, Germany and other skeptics of military action against Iraq by demanding that they agree publicly that Iraq had defied the United Nations Security Council.” Some officials believe that these nations can eventually be won over using a variety of incentives, including promises of contracts in post-Saddam Iraq. Other officials, however, believe that France will never submit to the US request, and are of the opinion that the US should “not bother to seek a second resolution condemning Iraq and authorizing the use of force.” [New York Times, 1/23/2003] Though the existence of this debate is a matter of the public record by mid-January, what is not known at this time is that some of those involved are probably obtaining their information from a “dirty-tricks” surveillance campaign that the intelligence services of the US, Britain, and possibly Australian, are conducting on the UN delegates of other UN Security Council members states (see January 31, 2003).

The final version of the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry’s report is heavily censored. [Source: Agence France-Presse]The 9/11 Congressional Inquiry is originally expected to release its complete and final report in January 2003, but the panel spends seven months negotiating with the Bush administration about what material can be made public, and the final report is not released until July 2003. In late March 2003, the US launches an attack on Iraq, beginning a long war. [Washington Post, 7/27/2003] The administration originally wanted two thirds of the report to remain classified. [Associated Press, 5/31/2003] The inquiry concluded in July 2002 that Mohamed Atta never met with an Iraqi agent in Prague, as some have claimed, but it is unable to make that conclusion public until now (see Late July 2002). Former Senator Max Cleland (D-GA), a member of the 9/11 Commission, will later claim: “The administration sold the connection [between Iraq and al-Qaeda] to scare the pants off the American people and justify the war. There’s no connection, and that’s been confirmed by some of bin Laden’s terrorist followers.… What you’ve seen here is the manipulation of intelligence for political ends. The reason this report was delayed for so long—deliberately opposed at first, then slow-walked after it was created—is that the administration wanted to get the war in Iraq in and over… before [it] came out. Had this report come out in January [2003] like it should have done, we would have known these things before the war in Iraq, which would not have suited the administration.” [United Press International, 7/25/2003] Senator Bob Graham (D-FL), one of the inquiry’s chairmen, also suspects that the administration deliberately does not hurry the declassification process along. However, he thinks this is because there is a “direct line between the terrorists and the government of Saudi Arabia.” According to author Philip Shenon, Graham thinks the administration wants to keep this material from the public because of its “determination to keep Saudi oil flowing to the United States.” [Shenon, 2008, pp. 50-51]

EPA staffers are instructed by higher-ups not to analyze any mercury or carbon dioxide reduction proposals that conflict with the president’s “Clear Skies” bill or, if they do, to keep the results under wraps. For example, an alternative proposal sponsored by senators Thomas R. Carper and Lincoln Chaffee is analyzed by the EPA but its conclusions—showing that the Carper-Chaffee plan has some advantages over Clear Skies—are not released. According to one EPA staffer later interviewed by the New York Times, Jeffrey Holmstead, the assistant administrator for air programs, wondered out loud during a May 2 meeting, “How can we justify Clear Skies if this gets out?” And in June, EPA administrator Christie Whitman sends a letter to senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman, informing them that the EPA will not do economic analysis on their alternative plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions as they requested. Senator McCain later tells the New York Times that he did “not feel it was normal procedure to refuse to analyze a bill that is under the agency’s jurisdiction.” [New York Times, 7/14/2003]

Execution of the Anabasis project (see Late November 2001 or December 2001) is blocked by General Tommy Franks. Journalists Michael Isikoff and David Corn write in their book Hubris that Franks “didn’t want a sideshow interfering with his carefully designed invasion plans.” Instead the Anabasis team, which has been waiting in Jordan (see January 2003), will help US forces cut roads and establish ties with local mullahs when the invasion begins. [Isikoff and Corn, 2006, pp. 211Sources:John Maguire]

CIA officials John McLaughlin and Robert Walpole send a revised version of a paper on Iraq’s alleged illicit weapons and terrorist ties to the White House. The paper, a rebuttal to Iraq’s December 7 declaration (see December 7, 2002) to the UN, is to serve as the basis for Powell’s February 5 speech (see February 5, 2003) before the UN Security Council. McLaughlin and Walpole say that it is the best they can do. But the White House is not impressed. Bush redelegates the task to Stephen Hadley and I. Lewis Libby, who go to the CIA to search for additional intelligence that they can add to the draft speech. [Isikoff and Corn, 2006, pp. 175]

The CIA issues an updated version of its September 2002 classified internal report (see September 2002) which stated that according to “sources of varying reliability,” Iraq had provided “training in poisons and gases” to al-Qaeda operatives. The allegation in that report was based on information provided by a captured Libyan national by the name of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. In this new updated version of the report, the CIA adds that “the detainee [al-Libi] was not in a position to know if any training had taken place.” It is not known whether this report is seen by White House officials. [Newsweek, 11/10/2005] Intelligence provided by al-Libi about Iraq will also be included in Secretary of State Colin Powell’s speech to the UN one month later (see February 5, 2003).

According to Bob Woodward’s book, Plan of Attack, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice visits George Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. Bush tells her: “We’re not winning. Time is not on our side here. Probably going to have to, we’re going to have to go to war.” [Washington Post, 4/17/2004] When the contents of Woodward’s book are reported in mid-April 2004, many people interpret Bush’s statement as a decision to go to war. But Rice will deny that that was the case. “… I just want it to be understood: That was not a decision to go to war,” she will say. “The decision to go to war is in March. The president is saying in that conversation, I think the chances are that this is not going to work out any other way. We’re going to have to go to war.” [Associated Press, 4/19/2004]

US President George Bush approves Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s December request (see December 11, 2002) to give US Strategic Command (STRATCOM) warplanners jurisdiction over the full range of the country’s warfare options, including nuclear weapons. Many senior officials are concerned, according to columnist and reporter William Arkin, “that nuclear weapons—locked away in a Pandora’s box for more than half a century—are being taken out of that lockbox and put on the shelf with everything else.” [Los Angeles Times, 1/26/2003Sources: Unnamed senior military officials at US Central Command]

The Bush administration prepares a “Theater Nuclear Planning Document” for Iraq which includes the possible use of nuclear weapons. According to multiple sources interviewed by columnist and reporter William Arkin, nuclear weapons are being considered for use in an attack against Iraqi facilities located deep underground or to preempt the use of weapons of mass destruction. The planning is being carried out at “STRATCOM’s Omaha headquarters, among small teams in Washington and at Vice President Dick Cheney’s ‘undisclosed location’ in Pennsylvania,” the Los Angeles Times reports. [Los Angeles Times, 1/26/2003Sources: Unnamed senior military officials at US Central Command]

Alberto Mora, the Navy’s general counsel, learns to his dismay that the torturing and abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay is continuing (see December 17-18, 2002), even after a meeting with the Pentagon’s chief counsel, William J. Haynes. Mora had hoped that Haynes would put a stop to the extreme techniques being used (see December 20, 2002). Mora has read an article in the Washington Post detailing allegations of CIA mistreatment of prisoners at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan; the story notes that the director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, believes that US officials who knew about such treatment could be charged with crimes under the doctrine of command responsibility. [Washington Post, 12/26/2002; New Yorker, 2/27/2006] The specific allegations detailed in the story closely parallel what Mora knows were authorized at Guantanamo Bay. Mora continues to argue against the intense interrogation techniques, and his arguments quickly reach the ears of top Pentagon officials such as Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz; Captain Jane Dalton, the legal adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke; and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who had authorized harsh interrogation techniques at Guantanamo a month before (see December 2, 2002). [New Yorker, 2/27/2006]

Chief executive officers of telecommunications companies and financial institutions express reluctance to provide data about their customers to three government agencies, the CIA, FBI, and Department of Homeland Security. The CEOs have been providing telephone, Internet and financial records to the CIA and, through it, the NSA to support “black” intelligence operations for some time (see After July 11, 1997), but after 9/11 the FBI asks for the same information that the CIA is getting. Then, after it is established in late 2002, the Department of Homeland Security also wants the same information. The CEOs begin saying, “Look, we’ll do this once but not three times,” and prefer to give the information to the FBI, which has formal subpoenas. The dispute grows so serious that White House homeland security adviser Frances Townsend has to mediate and summons FBI Director Robert Mueller and acting CIA Director John McLauglin to the White House to hammer the issue out. After a series of meetings, they agree to each appoint a senior official to coordinate, ensuring companies are not bombarded with multiple requests. [Woodward, 2006, pp. 324-5]

Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) conducts a survey of the cities and towns in New York State. Of those polled, 70 percent have not received any money at all from the federal government for their emergency crews and first responders—the nation’s front line of defense against terrorist attacks (see Early 2004). New York City police officials asked for $900 million in preparedness funds, and received $84 million—less than a tenth of what was requested. When the preparedness funds are studied on a per capita basis, the disparities are striking, and suspect. New York City, bastion of liberal Democrats (and the target of two of the four 9/11 hijacked jetliners) received $5.87 per person in funds—49th out of 50 major US cities. The city receiving the highest payout is New Haven, Connecticut ($77.82 per person), home of Yale University and the alma mater of three generations of Bushes. Key cities in Florida, where Jeb Bush is governor, also do well, with Miami receiving $52.82 per person, Orlando receiving $47.14, and Tampa receiving $30.57 per person. A harbor on Martha’s Vineyard, where many Republican and Democratic lawmakers vacation, received almost a million dollars in security funding; the harbormaster said, “Quite honestly, I don’t know what we’re going to do [with it], but you don’t turn down grant money.” [Carter, 2004, pp. 21]

ALL president Julie Brown points to her organization’s ‘Deadly Dozen’ poster. [Source: Life Magazine]A new advertising and poster campaign attacking pro-choice Catholic senators harks back to the dangerous “Deadly Dozen” campaign of 1995 (see 1995 and After), according to pro-choice advocates. The 1995 advertising and poster campaign targeted over a dozen health care and abortion providers, usually listing their names, addresses, and telephone numbers. The new campaign is by the American Life League (ALL—see 1979), an anti-abortion organization centered in Stafford, Virginia. Both the 1995 and the current campaigns feature “Old West” themed posters. ALL’s posters provide photographs of a dozen pro-choice US senators under the announcement, “Wanted For Fradulently Claiming Catholic Faith”; like the earlier campaign, the senators are branded as “The Deadly Dozen.” The senators pictured include Ted Kennedy (D-MA), Tom Daschle (D-SD), John Kerry (D-MA), and Barbara Mikulski (D-MD). The campaign calls for bishops to refuse communion to the senators. Vicki Saporta of the National Abortion Federation says she is appalled by ALL’s choice of slogans. “This type of language is associated with violence,” she says. “Seven people lost their lives as a result of this type of verbiage. What is the American Life League thinking?” The new ad campaign is running in selected newspapers, including the Washington Times and The Wanderer, a weekly Catholic newspaper in Massachusetts. A new round of posters is planned, targeting, among others, Governor Gray Davis (D-CA) of California and other California pro-choice lawmakers, according to ALL official Joseph Giganti. Giganti says ALL is opposed to violence and calls comparisons between his organization’s campaign and the 1995 campaign “reckless and careless.… Our ads don’t refer to being wanted dead or alive; it is referencing the fact abortion kills. We are simply saying, if you are in fact Catholic, how can you continue to support abortion?” Giganti blames pro-choice groups for “purposely… misinterpret[ing]” the campaign and using it “as a stepping stone to voice their own opinions.” At least 11 Catholic diocesan newspapers have turned down the ads. “The kind of advertising they are doing is inflammatory,” says Frances Kissling, president of Catholics for a Free Choice. “It could incite someone, set someone off. But the more dominant issue is that they will disgust people. This ad will only reinforce pro-choice. People who have mixed feelings about abortion, people who are moderates will be turned off by the advertisements.” A spokesman for one targeted senator, Christopher Dodd (D-CT), says of the campaign: “There is no place in America for personal attacks on those with whom one disagrees. Ultimately, Senator Dodd’s religious views are a personal matter between him and God.” [Life, 1/22/2003; Womens ENews, 4/21/2003]

UN inspection teams have so far completed 237 visits to suspected weapons sites since the inspections began 5 weeks ago. [Associated Press, 1/2/2003] Lt. Gen. Hussam Muhammad Amin, the chief Iraqi liaison to the UN inspectors, says: “The inspectors did not find any prohibited activities nor any prohibited items in those [237] sites visited up until now. .. All those activities proved that the Iraqi declarations are credible and the American allegations and claims are baseless…. The American administration is trying to create some pretexts to attack Iraq, to exercise their aggression against Iraq.” [New York Times, 1/3/2003]

The CIA’s Office of Inspector General begins an investigation of the agency’s torture and interrogation practices. The investigation is spurred by three stimuli: notification of a controversial incident in November 2002 (see Shortly After November 20, 2002); concerns over the interrogation of high-value detainee Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri (see January 2003); and other concerns about human rights abuses at a black site (see (January 2003)). The investigation will cover the period between September 2001 and mid-October 2003. [Central Intelligence Agency, 5/7/2004, pp. 2 ] The inspector general, John Helgerson, will issue his office’s final, classified report on the investigation in May 2004 (see May 7, 2004).

The Forest Service proposes a new rule that would create three new categories of timber sales exempt from National Environmental Policy Act requirements for environmental review and public input. The three new “categorical exclusions”—exemptions meant for activities that do not effect the environment—would apply to (1) “Low-impact silvicultural treatments involving harvest of live trees”; (2) “Harvest of dead/dying trees”; and (3) “Harvest of live, dead, or dying trees necessary to control insect and disease.” Though the Forest Service states that these activities do not have a significant effect on the environment, the rule would allow the constructions of roads through federally protected forests up to half a mile long. It would apply to more than 150 pending logging projects. [Wilderness Society, n.d.; US Forest Service, 1/3/2003 ; Perks, 4/2004, pp. 17-18 ]

A poll conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates among 1,204 adults indicates widespread misperception regarding Iraq. The poll finds that almost 25 percent believe the Bush administration has “publicly released evidence tying Iraq to the planning and funding of the September 11 attacks, and more than 1 in 3 respondents didn’t know or refused to answer.” [Knight Ridder, 1/12/2003] 44 percent of those polled believe that “most” or “some” of the September 11 hijackers were Iraqi citizens and only 17 percent know that none of the hijackers were Iraqis. [Editor & Publisher, 3/26/2003] The margin of error is estimated to be 3 percent. [Knight Ridder, 1/12/2003]

Bechtel wins a second contract from USAID to work on rebuilding Iraq’s infrastructure. Work will include the “repair of power generation facilities, electrical grids, municipal water systems and sewage systems; continued rehabilitation or repair of airport facilities; and additional dredging, repair and upgrading of the seaport at Umm Qasr.” The company will also “repair and build government and public facilities such as schools, selected ministry buildings and major irrigation structures, as well as restore essential transport links.” The contract has the potential to be worth as much as $1.8 billion. [US Agency for International Development, 1/6/2004; Financial Times, 1/7/2004]

US Army personnel at the US Blue Grass Army Depot discover a leaking mustard gas 155-mm artillery shell in one of its storage igloos. The base stores “about 55,000 rockets, land mines and other artillery with about 523 tons of chemical weapons,” the Associated Press reports. [Associated Press, 1/6/2003]

Developing nations, led by South Africa, demand that the UN weapons inspectors’ January 27 report be presented in public rather than during a closed-door meeting. In a letter to the UN Security Council, South Africa’s ambassador Dumisani Kumalo says that the entire UN membership would benefit from “receiving a first-hand account of this important report.” [Reuters, 1/7/2003]

The US says it is “willing to talk to North Korea about living up to its obligations to the international community” regarding its restarted nuclear program (see December 12, 2002), but adds that it “will not provide quid pro quos to North Korea to live up to its existing obligations.” [BBC, 12/2007]

After reviewing results of clinical study 3014 for the antibiotic Ketek, an FDA advisory panel recommends that the drug be approved. [Aventis, 1/9/2003] The panel makes the decision completely unaware that the FDA had discovered problems with the study only a few months before. [ABC, 1/14/2006; Wall Street Journal, 5/1/2006 ] In October, an FDA examiner found that some doctors were reporting fraudulent results. For example, some doctors had failed to record the data properly while others had invited patients into the study who did not meet the necessary qualifications. In one case, several patients who were enrolled in the study were not actually taking the drug (see October 2001-Fall 2002).

The alleged location of Camp Justice on the island of Diego Garcia. [Source: Public domain]The British Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Baroness Valerie Anne Amos, declares there are no prisoners at the US naval base on the island of Diego Garcia. [United Kingdom, 1/8/2003; United Kingdom, 3/3/2003] The island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean was leased to the US in 1966 for an initial period of 50 years (see December 30, 1966). It now accommodates a US naval base (see June 5, 1975) employing approximately 1,700 military personnel and 2,000 civilian contractors. No one is allowed on the island except for military business. [First, 6/2004 ; Diego Garcia, 1/5/2005] However, it has been reported several times in the press that detainees are being held at a CIA interrogation center on the island named “Camp Justice.” Pentagon officials have denied the existence of a CIA interrogation center on the island and the CIA has refused to respond to inquiries about its alleged existence. [Washington Post, 12/26/2002; First, 6/2004 ; Washington Post, 12/17/2004; Washington Post, 1/2/2005]

Britain urges the Bush administration to hold off its planned invasion of Iraq. A senior Whitehall source tells the Telegraph of London, “The Prime Minister has made it clear that, unless there is a smoking gun, the inspectors have to be given time to keep searching.” Britain’s softening on its position towards Iraq is attributed to the acknowledgement among its ministers and senior officials that there is no legal case for using military action against Iraq. [Daily Telegraph, 1/9/2003]

In the habeas case of “enemy combatant” Yaser Esam Hamdi, the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit rules again in favor of the government. The court decides that the facts presented by the government in the “Mobbs declaration” (see July 25, 2002) were sufficient to consider Hamdi rightfully as an “enemy combatant.” “Hamdi is not entitled to challenge the facts presented in the Mobbs declaration. Where, as here, a habeas petitioner has been designated an enemy combatant and it is undisputed that he was captured in a zone of active combat operations abroad, further judicial inquiry is unwarranted…,” the court holds. In response to Hamdi’s representatives’ argument that Article 5 of the Third Geneva Convention requires Hamdi’s status be determined by a competent tribunal, the court states that “the Geneva Convention is not self-executing,” and can therefore not be applied directly in a US court. [Yaser Esam Hamdi, et al. v. Donald Rumsfeld, et al., 1/8/2003 ]

UNMOVIC inspectors say they have yet to uncover evidence indicating that Iraq has resumed its production of weapons of mass destruction. After providing the UN Security Council with a summary of the inspectors’ findings, Hans Blix tells reporters in New York, “We have now been there for some two months and been covering the country in ever wider sweeps and we haven’t found any smoking guns.” [Guardian, 1/10/2003] But Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary, insists that the absence of evidence is of little concern, asserting, “The problem with guns that are hidden is you can’t see their smoke. We know for a fact that there are weapons there.” [Guardian, 1/10/2003] When asked how he knows this, Fleischer quotes from the UN weapons inspectors’ report and notes, “So while they’ve [UN Inspectors] said that there’s no smoking gun, they said the absence of it is not assured. And that’s the heart of the problem. The heart of the problem is Iraq is very good at hiding things.” [White House, 1/9/2003] John Negroponte, the US ambassador to the UN, accuses Iraq of “legalistic” cooperation, claiming that it needs to act proactively. He also says, “There is still no evidence that Iraq has fundamentally changed its approach from one of deceit to a genuine attempt to be forthcoming.” [Guardian, 1/10/2003] Colin Powell also seems undaunted by Blix’s remarks. “The lack of a smoking gun does not mean that there’s not one there,” he says, “If the international community sees that Saddam Hussein is not cooperating in a way that would not allow you to determine the truth of the matter, then he is in violation of the UN resolution [1441] (see November 8, 2002)…You don’t really have to have a smoking gun.” [News24, 1/10/2003] Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the British ambassador to the UN, echoes views from Washington, asserting that the “passive cooperation of Iraq has been good in terms of access and other procedural issues,” and adds, “But proactive cooperation has not been forthcoming—the kind of cooperation needed to clear up the remaining questions in the inspectors’ minds.” [Guardian, 1/10/2003]

US officials and advisers reject British suggestions—revealed the previous day—that the war be put off (see January 8, 2003). Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Policy Board, says that the Bush administration is under no obligation to abandon its war plans on account of opposition from the UN Security Council. He says, “I’m assuming that we will not get a consensus on the Security Council but it may be possible to get it… It would be a great mistake to become dependent on it and take the view that we can’t act separately… That would be an abrogation of the president’s responsibility… If there’s no change in Saddam’s attitude I think there’ll be a reluctance to continue this without a clear indication that our patience will be rewarded by a UN Security Council consensus… A consensus would be a useful thing and I think we’d be willing to wait a little longer to get it but not a long time… We might be acting without a resolution from the UN authorizing it but I think the administration can make a strong case that Saddam’s defiance of a variety of resolutions passed previously could be understood to justify military action.” [Daily Telegraph, 1/10/2003] And John Negroponte, the US Ambassador to the UN, also dismisses widespread objections to US aggression, asserting that any instances of Iraqi non-cooperation will “constitute further material breach,” regardless of what the UN ultimately decides. [Associated Press, 1/9/2003; London Times, 1/10/2003]

Matthew Hale, the leader of the World Church of the Creator (WCOTC—see May 1996 and After), shows up for a contempt of court hearing in a Chicago courtroom based on his refusal to give up his group’s name after losing a trademark infringement lawsuit (see November 2002). When Hale appears, he is arrested for soliciting the murder of the judge who presided over the lawsuit, Federal District Court Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow. Hale recently claimed Lefkow was prejudiced against him because she is married to a Jew and has children who are biracial. Law enforcement officials with Chicago’s Joint Terrorism Task Force say Hale asked another person to “forcibly assault and murder” Lefkow. FBI spokesman Thomas Kneir says: “Certainly freedom of speech and freedom of religion are important in our society here in America. But the threat of physical violence will not be tolerated.” US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald adds, “Freedom of speech does not include the freedom to solicit murder.” Hale is accompanied in the courtroom by about a dozen followers, many of whom raise their fists in what they call a Roman salute but that is more widely known as a Nazi salute. One WCOTC member, Shawm Powers, says: “This is totally bogus—it’s in our constitutional rights to believe in a religion. We are a bona fide religion, and they are trying to take that away from us. Matt Hale is not a violent man, he doesn’t advocate violence.” Anti-Defamation League official Richard Hirschhaut disagrees, saying: “Matt Hale has been allowed with impunity to engage in terrorist-like activity for four years now. He has had blood on his hands for more than four years. He is now where he should be.” Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center calls Hale “the most dangerous American racist of his generation.” Attorney Glenn Greenwald, representing Hale, says he believes the charge against Hale stems from what he calls a misinterpretation of Hale’s statement that “we are in a state of war with Judge Lefkow.” Greenwald says: “They are probably trying to take things he said along the lines of political advocacy and turn it into a crime. The FBI may have interpreted this protected speech as a threat against a federal judge, but it’s probably nothing more than some heated rhetoric.” During Hale’s incarceration, special administrative measures will be imposed to reduce his ability to communicate with his followers. [CNN, 1/8/2003; New York Times, 1/9/2003; Anti-Defamation League, 2005] The press will later learn that Hale solicited the murder from FBI informant Anthony Evola, a Chicago area pizza delivery man who was asked by Hale to distribute racist and anti-Semitic pamphlets to schoolchildren. Evola instead called the Chicago Public Schools to warn them about the racist material, and was later asked to become an FBI informant. In the months that followed, Evola became chief of Hale’s “White Beret” security squad and frequently traveled with Hale. Evola provided FBI officials with an email from Hale soliciting Lefkow’s home address, and a tape recording of a discussion between the two about Lefkow’s murder. On the tape, Evola said, “We going to exterminate the rat?” Hale replied, “Well, whatever you want to do basically.” Evola said, “The Jew rat.” Hale then said: “You know, my position has always been that I, you know, I’m going to fight within the law… but that information has been provided.… If you wish to do anything yourself, you can.” Evola replied, “Consider it done,” and Hale responded, “Good.” [Southern Poverty Law Center, 4/2003; New York Times, 3/2/2005; Associated Press, 4/26/2005] In addition, former WCOTC leader Jon Fox will testify that Hale asked him in December 2002 to kill Lefkow and others involved in the legal dispute. [Chicago Sun-Times, 4/14/2004; Chicago Tribune, 4/15/2004]

Alberto Mora, the Navy’s general counsel, meets for a second time with Pentagon general counsel William J. Haynes, who he had tried unsuccessfully to convince to join him in opposing the use of extreme interrogation methods at Guantanamo (see December 20, 2002). Mora will write in a June 2004 memo (see July 7, 2004) that when he tells Haynes how disappointed he is that nothing has been done to stop abuse at Guantanamo, Haynes retorts that “US officials believed the techniques were necessary to obtain information,” and that the interrogations might prevent future attacks against the US and save American lives. Mora acknowledges that he can imagine any number of “ticking bomb” scenarios where it might be the proper, if not the legal, thing to torture suspects. But, he asks, how many lives must be saved to justify torture? Hundreds? Thousands? Where do we draw the line? Shouldn’t there be a public debate on the issue? Mora is doubtful that anyone at Guantanamo would be involved in such a scenario, since almost all of the Guantanamo detainees have been in custody for over a year. He also warns Haynes that the legal opinions the administration is using will probably not stand up in court. If that is the case, then US officials could face criminal charges. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld could find himself in court; the presidency itself could be damaged. “Protect your client!” he says. When Haynes relates Mora’s concerns to Rumsfeld, according to a former administration official, Rumsfeld responds with jokes about how gentle the interrogation techniques are. “Torture?” he asks rhetorically. “That’s not torture!” He himself stands for up to ten hours a day, he says, and prisoners are not allowed to stand for over four. The official will recall, “His attitude was, ‘What’s the big deal?’” Mora continues to push his arguments, but, as a former Pentagon colleague will recall: “people were beginning to roll their eyes. It was like, ‘Yeah, we’ve already heard this.’” [New Yorker, 2/27/2006]

Vice President Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, and dozens of senior White House officials receive a highly classified intelligence assessment, a Senior Executive Memorandum titled “Questions on Why Iraq Is Procuring Aluminum Tubes and What the IAEA Has Found to Date,” on the issue of the disputed use of the Iraqi aluminum tubes. The report concludes that the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and National Security Agency all believe that the aluminum tubes were most likely intended for centrifuges. The memo says that only the intelligence units at the Departments of Energy and State, along with the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), disagree with that assessment and believe the tubes were purchased to be used in Iraq’s conventional rocket program, and includes discussion of the dissenting opinions. [The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction (aka 'Robb-Silberman Commission'), 3/31/2005; National Journal, 3/2/2006]

Vice President Cheney says: “[C]onfronting the threat posed by Iraq is not a distraction from the war on terror; it is absolutely crucial to winning the war on terror. As the president has said, Iraq could decide on any given day to provide biological or chemical weapons to a terrorist group or individual terrorist, which is why the war on terror will not be won until Iraq is completely and verifiably deprived of weapons of mass destruction.” [American Forces Press Service, 1/10/2003]

Defense Department officials and representatives from the Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos laboratories attend the “Stockpile Stewardship Conference Planning Meeting” called by Dale Klein, the assistant to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, to prepare for a secret conference on nuclear weapons during the week of August 4, 2003 (see Early August 2003). The purpose of the conference will be to discuss the construction of a new generation of nuclear weapons, including “low-yield” neutron bombs designed to destroy chemical or biological agents and “mini-nukes,” or “bunker-busters,” which could be used to destroy underground targets. Another purpose of the meeting will be to consider restarting nuclear testing and to discuss how the American public can be convinced that the new weapons are necessary. [San Francisco Chronicle, 2/15/2003; Guardian, 2/19/2003; Washington Post, 2/20/2003]

On January 9, 2003, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) publishes preliminary results of the UN’s renewed weapons inspections in Iraq, and finds no evidence at all that Iraq has resumed its nuclear weapons program. It also finds no evidence that Iraq has used aluminum tubes to generate nuclear material (see January 9, 2003). In 2004, the New York Review of Books will comment: “Given the importance the [Bush] administration had attached to this matter, this would have seemed news of the utmost significance. Yet it was largely ignored. The [New York] Times, which had so prominently displayed its initial story about the aluminum tubes, buried its main article about [it] on page A10.” At the time, the Bush administration is arguing that the UN inspections are meaningless (see January 9, 2003). IAEA spokesperson Mark Gwozdecky will later say: “Nobody wanted to challenge the president. Nobody wanted to believe inspections had anything of value to bring to the table. The press bought into that.” [New York Review of Books, 2/26/2004]

Assistant Secretary of the Interior Craig Manson writes to the State of Montana and withdraws a December 2002 environmental impact assessment conducted by National Park Service scientists which had concluded that the emissions from a proposed 780-megawatt coal-fired Roundup Power Plant would negatively affect visibility and air quality at Yellowstone National Park, located 112 miles away from the plant’s proposed site. Manson, a former Sacramento judge, claims that “weather events” had skewed the results of the study. [National Parks Magazine, 3/2003; PEER, 3/16/2003; Bozeman Daily Chronicle, 10/31/2003; Perks, 4/2004, pp. 28 ]

CIA manager Jami Miscik. [Source: Black Collegian]Jami Miscik, head of the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence, storms into CIA Director George Tenet’s office, complaining about having to attend more meetings with Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley to rebut the Iraq-al-Qaeda connection yet again. She tells Tenet, “I’m not going back there again, George. If I have to go back to hear their crap and rewrite this g_ddamn report… I’m resigning, right now.” Tenet calls Hadley and shouts into the phone, “She is not coming over. We are not rewriting this f_cking report one more time. It’s f_cking over. Do you hear me! And don’t you ever f_cking treat my people this way again. Ever!” This is according to Ron Suskind in his book, The One Percent Doctrine. Suskind will conclude, “And that’s why, three weeks later, in making the case for war in his State of the Union address, George W. Bush was not able to say what he’d long hoped to say at such a moment: that there was a pre-9/11 connection between al-Qaeda and Saddam.” [Suskind, 2006, pp. 190-191]

Global Strike logo. [Source: Federation of American Scientists]President Bush signs a classified presidential directive that defines the “Global Strike” program, formalized as Contingency Plan 8022, or CONPLAN-8022, as US policy. Global Strike implements nuclear weapons as part of a possible US preemptive strike against envisioned enemies. In the order, Bush defines Global Strike as “a capability to deliver rapid, extended range, precision kinetic (nuclear and conventional) and non-kinetic (elements of space and information operations) effects in support of theater and national objectives.” He orders that Global Strike be turned over to the US Strategic Command (STRATCOM), the entity in charge of deploying and using the nation’s nuclear arsenal, telling it to “be ready to strike at any moment’s notice in any dark corner of the world.” A month later, General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will tell the House Armed Services Committee, “With its Global Strike responsibilities, the Command will provide a core cadre to plan and execute nuclear, conventional, and information operations anywhere in the world.” [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 179-180] The plan is not revealed until May 2005, when defense analyst William Arkin writes of the program for the Washington Post. [Washington Post, 5/15/2005] In 2008, author J. Peter Scoblic will write: “Global Strike represented the next—some might say the ultimate—manifestation of this principle [domination and isolationism], allowing for the possibility of purely unilateral military action. There was no need for allies and no need for nation building. Just as missile defense could protect us from having to engage the world, so Global Strike could allow the United States to dominate the world while standing utterly apart from it.” [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 183]

North Korea announces that it is withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (see December 12, 1985). Since its attempts to reopen diplomatic talks with the US were rejected (see October 27, 2002 and November 2002), it has announced its restarting of its nuclear energy program (see December 12, 2002) and expelled international inspectors (see December 31, 2002). Around this same time, it begins removing some 8,000 spent fuel rods from storage, a direct indication that it intends to restart its nuclear weapons program. This is a burgeoning crisis for the world, as North Korea is, in many experts’ view, the definition of a “rogue nation,” but the Bush administration refuses to recognize it as a crisis. In 2008, author J. Peter Scoblic will write, “President Bush, focused on Iraq, refused to label it as such.” North Korea has enough nuclear material to make six to eight nuclear weapons; some experts believe it already has one or two. With the inspectors gone, the world has no way to know what North Korea is doing with its spent fuel rods, or where they are being stored—removing the possibility that the US could destroy them with a targeted air strike. Bush’s response to the North Korean crisis is contradictory. While labeling it a member of the “axis of evil” (see January 29, 2002), and sometimes acting belligerently towards that nation (see March 2003-May 2003), he also insists that the US will not use military force to restrain North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. Diplomacy is the answer to the crisis, Bush says, but his administration refuses to talk to the North Koreans (see November 2002) until later in the month (see Mid-January 2003). [BBC, 12/2007; Scoblic, 2008, pp. 239-240, 242]

FBI Director Robert Mueller personally awards Marion (Spike) Bowman with a presidential citation and cash bonus of approximately 25 percent of his salary. [Salon, 3/3/2003] Bowman, head of the FBI’s national security law unit and the person who refused to seek a special warrant for a search of Zacarias Moussaoui’s belongings before the 9/11 attacks (see August 28, 2001), is among nine recipients of bureau awards for “exceptional performance.” The award comes shortly after a 9/11 Congressional Inquiry report saying Bowman’s unit gave Minneapolis FBI agents “inexcusably confused and inaccurate information” that was “patently false.” [Star-Tribune (Minneapolis), 12/22/2002] Bowman’s unit was also involved in the failure to locate 9/11 hijackers Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi after their names were put on a watch list (see August 28-29, 2001). In early 2000, the FBI acknowledged serious blunders in surveillance Bowman’s unit conducted during sensitive terrorism and espionage investigations, including agents who illegally videotaped suspects, intercepted e-mails without court permission, and recorded the wrong phone conversations. [Associated Press, 1/10/2003] As Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) and others have pointed out, not only has no one in government been fired or punished for 9/11, but several others have been promoted: [Salon, 3/3/2003] Richard Blee, chief of Alec Station, the CIA’s bin Laden unit, was made chief of the CIA’s new Kabul station in December 2001 (see December 9, 2001), where he aggressively expanded the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program (see Shortly After December 19, 2001). Blee was the government’s main briefer on al-Qaeda threats in the summer of 2001, but failed to mention that one of the 9/11 hijackers was in the US (see August 22-September 10, 2001). In addition to Blee, the CIA also promoted his former director for operations at Alec Station, a woman who took the unit’s number two position. This was despite the fact that the unit failed to put the two suspected terrorists on the watch list (see August 23, 2001). “The leaders were promoted even though some people in the intelligence community and in Congress say the counterterrorism unit they ran bore some responsibility for waiting until August 2001 to put the suspect pair on the interagency watch list.” CIA Director George Tenet has failed to fulfill a promise given to Congress in late 2002 that he would name the CIA officials responsible for 9/11 failures. [New York Times, 5/15/2003] Pasquale D’Amuro, the FBI’s counterterrorism chief in New York City before 9/11, was promoted to the bureau’s top counterterrorism post. [Time, 12/30/2002] FBI Supervisory Special Agent Michael Maltbie, who removed information from the Minnesota FBI’s application to get the search warrant for Moussaoui, was promoted to field supervisor and goes on to head the Joint Terrorism Task Force at the FBI’s Cleveland office. [Salon, 3/3/2003; Newsday, 3/21/2006] David Frasca, head of the FBI’s Radical Fundamentalist Unit, is “still at headquarters,” Grassley notes. [Salon, 3/3/2003] The Phoenix memo, which was addressed to Frasca, was received by his unit and warned that al-Qaeda terrorists could be using flight schools inside the US (see July 10, 2001 and July 27, 2001 and after). Two weeks later Zacarias Moussaoui was arrested while training to fly a 747, but Frasca’s unit was unhelpful when local FBI agents wanted to search his belongings—a step that could have prevented 9/11 (see August 16, 2001 and August 20-September 11, 2001). “The Phoenix memo was buried; the Moussaoui warrant request was denied.” [Time, 5/27/2002] Even after 9/11, Frasca continued to “[throw] up roadblocks” in the Moussaoui case. [New York Times, 5/27/2002] Dina Corsi, an intelligence operations specialist in the FBI’s bin Laden unit in the run-up to 9/11, later became a supervisory intelligence analyst. [US Department of Justice, 11/2004, pp. 279-280 ; CNN, 7/22/2005] Corsi repeatedly hampered the investigation of Almihdhar and Alhazmi in the summer of 2001 (see June 11, 2001, June 12-September 11, 2001, Before August 22, 2001, August 27-28, 2001, August 28, 2001, August 28-29, 2001, and (September 5, 2001)). President Bush later names Barbara Bodine the director of Central Iraq shortly after the US conquest of Iraq. Many in government are upset about the appointment because of her blocking of the USS Cole investigation, which some say could have uncovered the 9/11 plot (see October 14-Late November, 2000). She did not apologize or admit she was wrong. [Washington Times, 4/10/2003] However, she is fired after about a month, apparently for doing a poor job. An FBI official who tolerates penetration of the translation department by Turkish spies and encourages slow translations just after 9/11 was promoted (see March 22, 2002). [CBS News, 10/25/2002]

Following press reports that the Bush administration has begun supplying inspectors with intelligence, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed ElBaradei tells reporters that the inspection teams need “more actionable information” and that the US is still refusing to provide “specific intelligence about where to go and where to inspect.” He adds that “the inspections process will intensify to allow the inspections to speedup” if the Bush administration cooperates with inspectors. He also suggests that he does not think Iraq has a nuclear weapons program. He says: “I think it’s difficult for Iraq to hide a complete nuclear-weapons program. They might be hiding some computer studies or R. and D. on one single centrifuge. These are not enough to make weapons.” [Montreal Gazette, 1/11/2003; Washington Post, 1/11/2003; Time, 1/12/2003; Sun-Herald (Sydney), 1/12/2003] Richard A. Boucher, a spokesperson for the State Department, contests ElBaradei’s contention that inspectors have been given little to go on, saying, “I can certainly say that they’re getting the best we’ve got, and that we are sharing information with the inspectors that they can use, and based on their ability to use it.” [Washington Post, 1/11/2003]

A Special Mission Unit (SMU) Task Force lawyer in Afghanistan (see Early 2002) writes in a classified legal review that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s authorization of harsh interrogation methods (see December 2, 2002) “provides us the most persuasive argument for use of ‘advanced techniques’ as we capture possible [high value targets]… the fact that SECDEF [Rumsfeld] approved the use of the… techniques at GTMO [Guantanamo], [which is] subject to the same laws, provides an analogy and basis for use of these techniques [in accordance with] international and US law.” [Huffington Post, 4/21/2009]

Pentagon General Counsel William J. Haynes reportedly meets with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to discuss concerns over the use of interrogation techniques at Guantanamo that were approved by Rumsfeld in December (see December 2, 2002). Rumsfeld, according to Dell’Orto, calls Gen. James T. Hill and suspends the use of the category two and the single category three technique. [Washington File, 6/23/2004]

Simon Dodge, an Iraq nuclear analyst from the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), writes in an email to other intelligence community analysts that the “uranium purchase agreement probably is a hoax.” He adds that the document (see October 15, 2002) suggesting that Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Libya, and Pakistan had met to discuss forming an anti-West coalition was “clearly a forgery.” [US Congress, 7/7/2004; Isikoff and Corn, 2006, pp. 164] A July 2003 memo from the INR’s Carl Ford will note that on the same day as Dodge’s email, the bureau “expressed concerns to the CIA that the documents pertaining to the Iraq-Niger deal were forgeries.” [Carl W. Ford, Jr, 7/7/2003]

US President George Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell meet alone in the Oval Office for twelve minutes. According to Woodward’s book, Plan of Attack, Bush says, “The inspections are not getting us there…. I really think I’m going to have to do this,” meaning go to war with Iraq. He adds that he is firm in his decision. Powell responds, “You’re sure?… You understand the consequences…. You know that you’re going to be owning this place?” Bush indicates that he understands the implications and asks, “Are you with me on this?… I think I have to do this. I want you with me.” Powell responds: “I’ll do the best I can.… Yes, sir, I will support you. I’m with you, Mr. President.” Woodward will also say in his book that Bush had never—ever—asked his Secretary of State for his advice on the matter of Iraq. “In all the discussions, meetings, chats and back-and-forth, in Powell’s grueling duels with Rumsfeld and Defense, the president had never once asked Powell, Would you do this? What’s your overall advice? The bottom line?” Woodward will write. [New York Times, 4/17/2004; Washington Post, 4/18/2004Sources: Top officials interviewed by Washington Post editor Bob Woodward]

Both Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei say they need several more months before they can determine whether or not Saddam Hussein still has an illegal weapons program. ElBaradei says the inspectors “still need a few months to achieve our mission,” but adds that Baghdad must supply more documents to verify its claim that Iraq no longer is developing weapons of mass destruction. ElBaradei also hints at his concern that the US might end the inspections by invading the country. He says, “It could be that one day they will say, ‘Move aside boys, we are coming in.’” [New York Times, 11/13/2003]

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